Archive pages for this user talk page

Tagging project

Dear P.davydov, I am interested. Please assign me the sonata (piano) and concerto pages. Thanks! Also, I propose changing the tags to the Italian names (e.g. "Bn" for bassoon to "fag <--This is the Italian abbreviation, not the English insult", "Hn" for horn to "cor".) ClassicalComposers 02:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm ready when you are! If you could make the announcement, then it wouldn't just be Tchaikovsky getting tagged :)-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 22:20, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Your enthusiasm is commendable, Snailey, but be patient :-) I'm spending a little time familiarising myself with the system, so that we'll be ready to start in earnest on Monday evening — P.davydov

Not much variety there :-) But you might get to use "ww str" instead of "orch" if there are no brass instruments in some of the early symphonies. Oh, and thanks for the upgrade BTW! — P.davydov 22:30, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

That was Feldmahler - I'm not a bureaucrat, so I can't actually make that change :)-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 22:33, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I have time to start right now, with the piano concertos first. :) ClassicalComposers 17:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Translator Status

Dear P.davydov, may I ask for privileges as a translator? I would like to translate special pages from English to Chinese (traditional and simplified). As you can see, there are currently no Chinese translators. Thank you for your consideration! ClassicalComposers 18:24, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Dear ClassicalComposers. Unfortunately I don't have the status to grant translator privileges, and I think that's within Peter's remit (who you may already have contacted). Sorry — P.davydov 18:31, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Now that you can, can you please consider it? ClassicalComposers 23:29, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Please, reply if you have any opinions :) I take this seriously, you know... :) ClassicalComposers 17:20, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry for not replying, but I'm very tied up with the tagging project that's about to start in a few hours. As there's already a system for signing up translators I think it would be wrong of me to jump in and start appointing people without knowing anything about the translation project — not to mention the fact that I've no idea technically how to do that yet anyway :-) I understand that you've already asked the right people, but they haven't replied to you yet (maybe because they're away for the holidays). But I'm sure that Peter or Leonard will get back to you as soon as they can, and I hope this waiting period won't make you any the less enthusiastic! — P.davydov 18:28, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

With the other volunteers we agreed a specific time, so that I could be on hand to deal with any issues that arose when they started. I need to do the same with you, so would you prefer some time between 0500 and 0800 CST or after 1600 CST on Saturday? — P.davydov 22:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Genres

I'll be making a few changes to MediaWiki:Genres. I hope you don't mind.

Typesets

Dear P.davydov, are retypesets of editions under copyright also under copyright? Thanks, ClassicalComposers 21:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Usually, yes, but it depends when the composer died and when the edition in question was first published. If you have a specific example in mind, it would be easier to say for certain — P.davydov 21:13, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

1080

Dear P.davydov, I saw your tag on The Art of Fugue. In case you don't know, JSB died without specifying the instrumentation for the piece, so it is best if you remove the "for 1 player," "keyboard," and "for keyboard" tags. Yes, it is "chamber-instrumental," but it is definitely not "keyboard" because many recordings are performed in a string quartet. Thanks, ClassicalComposers 22:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course, other sources say otherwise. Tovey points out that there is no reason for which Bach would have crippled himself so drastically as to make it playable by a keyboard instrument, unless that was his intended instrumentation; also the eccentric voices don't work. It is quite common to see baroque fugues in open score, and thus Bach may have written it as such to make it more "encyclopedic" in nature. It is widely musicologically accepted now that it was a keyboard work - the other versions are a Romantic notion of the artist working for posterity, as is the notion that he died while working on it.-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 01:11, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I did some research before adding the tag, you know :-) — P.davydov 12:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Intersections

How about we replace these (on composer pages) with an automatically placed category walker link?-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 16:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a good idea, but the walker isn't quite ready to roll out to the public yet, as Feldmahler wants to make more changes after his MIT talk next week, and we need a fairly good proportion of works tagged first to make the walker useful (approx 15% have been tagged after 10 days, which is really good going). Were you thinking of modifying the composer page template to include the walker? — P.davydov 17:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I was just asking about the theoretical. It sounds like you think it's good, so I'll direct the idea to Feld.-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 17:50, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ultimately the category walker is not only going to be used on the Composer pages, but also as a complete replacement for the current genre system. The user will have a choice of browsing by Category:Composer or Special:CategoryWalker/Scores/. There may also be a page with commonly used CW links so that users don't have to start from /Scores/.

However, the tagging is still in the early stages, and I would set 50% as the time when we start rolling out CW. Though, I'm actually finished with CW changes (I originally planned to finish after MIT, but changed my mind; the last update should be the last one unless some new problem surfaces). The CW is currently ready for public consumption, but I think the tagging is probably not far advanced enough yet.

Also, I want to note this. I was playing with CW today, and noticed that work pages for works that are complete transcriptions of other prior works are not distinguished. And so I was wondering that perhaps it is a good idea to distinguish them via a 'arr' or 'trans' tag.

A good example is the Liszt transcriptions, which have their own page. When I was using CW, I thought it weird that he wrote so many Symphonies for Piano (considering that I didn't know he wrote any, and have not heard of any Symphonies for Piano besides the Symphonies for Organ Widor wrote I think), but they turned out to be Beethoven Symphony transcriptions. And so I thought that users might want to use the negative intersect on pages like that so they get only original works.

To prevent ambiguities and needless case-by-case discussion (for example, the recent Prokofiev Op.94 case), I would go with a strict "first in time, first in right" rule, namely that whichever came first is the original piece, regardless of popularity. If it is unclear which came first, neither is tagged as a transcription.

I leave the ultimate decision to you, but it just struck me that this may be a very useful distinction to have. I would also encourage tagging other such distinctions should they arise (I can't think of any though), since being tagged in more detail does not require that much more work.

But in any case, very good job! The tags seem to be coming very well, and I think we may have the most flexible and useful categorization system for music since there was any :-) --Feldmahler 22:21, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I like that last comment :-) Actually the transcription pages in question are the exceptions rather than the rule, and it's difficult to see why they shouldn't be placed on the page for the original work, like the other 95% of arrangements already are. In fact some of the Liszt transcriptions are currently included twice: once on the original work page, and again on their own separate page! This seems to have happened in the early days before the present system evolved, so maybe now is the time to sort out these anomalies... at the risk of being lynched by Lisztians :-) — P.davydov 22:30, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

In that case, perhaps it might not be a bad idea to tag them as transcriptions so that we can find them later? You don't have to go back and fix previously tagged pages, but I'd think that going forward it would not be a big additional burden to tag transcription pages as transcriptions. I mean, the tags get destroyed when the page is destroyed, so the "transcription" tag won't taint any other pages.

But take what I say above as only a suggestion. Its still your call.

Also, in light of the CW page caches, I added the "Previous" link you requested to the CW page. Not online yet, but just a note :-) In addition, CW page purging currently does not work, but that will change when the new version is uploaded. The syntax is the same as normal page cache purges. --Feldmahler 14:29, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem of transcriptions having separate pages seems only to occur with Liszt, and as far as I can tell there are only 20 in this group with tags at the moment. Some of these are straightforward piano reductions (where they should certainly go on the page for the original work), while others are paraphrases or elaborations on the originals that are sufficiently different to merit their own pages. Unfortunately distinguishing one type from the other isn't always straightforward, and it will take time to research. In the meantime I'm wary of adding a "transcripion" tag/category specially for these works, if (a) it's going to disappear soon anyway, and (b) it will cause confusion as to why some transcriptions that aren't labelled. So for now I think we should just grin and bear the Liszt problem, until it can be sorted out. But any other situations crop up elsewhere, we should aim to fix them at the point of tagging — P.davydov 19:19, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The Liszt's aren't the only one left, there is still the Prokofiev, which was contentious, and there was opposition to combining the two on the grounds that Violinists wouldn't find it. Perhaps the Violin Sonata page can be left as is and just redirect to the Flute Sonata page? For violinists who don't know the history of the piece? Or the Flute Sonata page be re-titled "Sonata (Flute/Violin), op.94?". (Steltz)

Berwald piano trios

Hi P.davydovthere's some confusion regarding the numbering of the trios. See the comment on each work page and my remarks here. Since Steltz has not answered yet I would ask you to have a look at the trios/scores. Maybe you know more about their history. Thanks and regards, Hobbypianist 20:04, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Hello Hobbypianist. There does seem to be some confusion here, but it looks like the situation is as follows:

Current title

Grove

Suggestions

Piano Trio No.1

Piano Trio in C major (1st version, 1845)

move to "Piano Trio in C major" (as 1st version)

Piano Trio No.2

Piano Trio No.1 in E flat major (1849)

move to "Piano Trio No.1" (as 2nd version)

Piano Trio No.3

Piano Trio No.2 in F minor (1851)

move to "Piano Trio No.2"

Piano Trio No.4

Piano Trio No.3 in D minor (1851)

move to "Piano Trio No.3"

Piano Trio No.5

Piano Trio No.4 in C major (?1853)

move to "Piano Trio No.4"

Piano Trio in C Major, Fragment

Piano Trio in C major (unfinished 2nd version, 1850)

move to "Piano Trio in C major" (as 2nd version)

Piano Trio in E flat Major, Fragment

Piano Trio No.1 in E♭ major (1849) (unfinished early draft, 1849)

move to "Piano Trio No.1" (as 1st version)

The Grove numbering seems to be well established in recordings, so it should be OK to use it without including the keys. Hope this helps — P.davydov 21:30, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. ok, if it's established I can live with that numbering. I've moved the pages accordingly. Hobbypianist 13:34, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you, I truly got buried in other stuff, and this got further and further down the list of things to check! (Steltz)

Featured

Could you do the featured scores on Monday and Tuesday? Just follow the instructions. Thanks.-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 03:49, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. Is there a particular time of day when the list is updated? (I'm on UTC) — P.davydov 10:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for doing this. If you do it in the future, try to keep the order in which I've given it (I like Ma vlast too!), because there's a reason (I was saving the Kreutzer sonata for a "Grand Finale" and Ma Vlast is not a 47)-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 17:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Some errorneous concepts of multiple instrumentation tags (OR, not AND)

Was playing around with CW, and happened upon some contradictions like this: 1 player/2 player keyboard works (!?). It seems to me that this is because a few people mistakenly tagged a violin and piano piece both "pno vn" and "pno", whereas the tag should only be "pno vn".

This seems to be due to a misconception that multiple instrumentation tags are ANDed (tag 1 AND tag 2), whereas for instrumentation, the tags should be OR'd (tag 1 OR tag 2). A work should be tagged "pno vn" and "pno" only if the work can be performed either by piano and violin OR piano alone.

There aren't that many erroneous tags of this sort, but just a heads up, as perhaps this requires clarification. I think it just requires that the librarians think about it before using multiple instrumentation tags (i.e. multiple instrumentation tags should be used very infrequently, and only when there are alternate instrumentations). Not a huge deal, but might be nice to be fixed at some point.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've taken a look, and the examples I saw all seem to be works that can be played either by 1 player or by 2 players (i.e. solo instrument plus a second instrument ad lib.). There are a surprisingly large number of works with alternative instrumentations, and the rule is to include tags for all the authorised permuatations of solo instruments. But if you see any where, say "vn ; pf" should really be "vn pf" then let me know.

Ah.... I'm sorry I didn't investigate more thoroughly!

BTW, would it be possible to allow the use of the apostrophe (') in category names generated from the tags? Using "oboe d amore", "violin d amore" and "childrens chorus" feels a little odd :-) — P.davydov 22:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the apostrophe is specifically forbidden in tag names due to security reasons; compared to the alternatives I think avoiding the apostrophe is the best result... --Feldmahler 22:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The tagging is proceeding very fast I see :-) I've also uploaded another update to the CW (mostly speed and caching improvements). There is now also an independent tag resolver in the #tags: function. Same syntax as |Tags= on the work page. Can't think of any use for it at the moment, but seemed like a nice idea for the future. --Feldmahler 21:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Maybe that would have some future application for classifying arrangements and transcriptions within a work page, although that will need a lot of thinking about :-) — P.davydov 22:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Bingo. That was exactly what I was thinking. I thought perhaps we could have a template that will automatically create the transcription sub-heading at the same time as it adds the tag categories. However, I have not worked out (1) translation of tag into sub-heading text, and (2) finding pages that actually contain transcriptions so people don't have to check every page.

For (2), I'm inclining towards checking the level of subheading under the files section (say, all pages with ==== ==== level subheadings), but it may be very useful if you can keep an eye out for how people distinguish transcriptions on work pages so that, when the time comes, you can tell me how to distinguish them from other subheadings/entries. --Feldmahler 22:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

What should happen is that we have the heading "===Arrangements and Transcriptions===" (i.e. level 3), indicating the start of the section, followed by level 5 sub-headings "=====For Piano 4 hands (Smith)=====" indicating the instrumentation (and transcriber's name, if known) relating to each individual transcription. These headings were brought in around 18 months ago, and they're fairly well established, but understandably haven't permeated everywhere yet (maybe around 80%) — P.davydov 23:13, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Technically I suppose I can base the tags off of that, but I have a feeling what we want is rigid error-triggering standardization in this area. Software is usually more picky than humans, so even a slight typo, stray character or rewording may throw the entire thing out. That's why, despite the preexisting structure, I might still opt for a |Tags= type standardization.

But I'll need to think more about this. Of course, I welcome any and all comments. --Feldmahler 01:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

New Arrangement Autotagging

Actually an idea struck me, and now arrangement autotagging is up. Just purge the cache of a page with arrangements on it, and it will automatically parse the tags like you specified above.

How it works: =====For Piano (Someone)===== is parsed into the tag "for piano (arr)" (all lowercase). Unlike work page tags, if this tag cannot be resolved (not on MW:G), it will add the page to [Category:For piano (arr)] (if it was a workpage tag it won't add at all). It will also add the page to [Category:Unknown arrangement tag].

Otherwise it uses MW:G like any normal tag. Play with it. This should hopefully complete the missing part of MW:G, namely arrangement tagging. It is not perfect, but should go a long way hopefully. --Feldmahler 04:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It certainly will! I'm still playing with it, but it should save an enormous amount of work. Thank you! — P.davydov 12:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

string quartets done!=

(Steltz)

If they ever award medals for services to IMSLP, then a gold one will surely be heading your way. Thanks for perservering with that very tedious task! — P.davydov 12:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Dauprat Trio

Hello:

I am new to all of this. I have a question regarding the title of a work and Carolus told me I should ask for your expertise. I would be grateful if you could help me. First, I've been trying unsuccessfully to change the work title of the first work I've uploaded : Trio pour 3 cors et piano (L.-F. Dauprat). I would like to change the title from "Trio pour 3 cors et piano" to either, "Horn Trio with Piano accompaniment" or "Trio de cors avec accompagnement de piano", since a "Trio pour cors et piano" is not really a trio! Could you help me with that? I've been trying to modify it myself but I just can't figure out how exactly. Thank you so much!

Genres

...Just wanted to stop by and say: Most impressive!! A remarkable system with great flexibility. Congratulations. Carolus 01:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Schubert

“

Ahh, I see that you are active in editing Schubert pages also. I know that I need to do something about the numbering of Schubert's piano sonatas. Do you suppose I should simply insert a comma between "Sonata" and the Deutsch number (i.e. Piano Sonata, D.568), or do you think I should assign numbers to them according to the template (i.e. Piano Sonata No.7, D.568)? I'm asking you this because I dislike double-redirects and useless redirect pages—they are a waste of IMSLP's bandiwidth. ClassicalComposers 01:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I am in favor of using the first system (Piano Sonata, D.568). Schubert didn't assign numbers to his sonatas, so such designations are the creations of publishers long after the fact. Trouble is, there are several different numberings depending on who the publisher was. The Breitkopf complete edition tried to standardize the numbering, but as you can see with the symphonies, it hasn't been very successful. I would put any re-numbering / re-titling proposal up on the forum and see what everyone thinks before doing anything. Schubert has some ardent fans here, so it's important to get everyone's input. Also ask P.davydov, who has much library experience and often is aware of reasons why it's a good idea to do it in a particular manner. Carolus 01:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

”

So, what do you think? ClassicalComposers 01:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
I'd agree with Carolus that there's no established numbering system for Schubert's sonatas, and libraries only use the Deutsch catalogue number in their catalogues, so using "Piano Sonata, D.568" seems the best method.

BTW, thank you for separating out the rest of the Bach harpsichord concertos yesterday, which is necessary so that they can each be correctly tagged — P.davydov 10:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC).

Septets are done

BTW, I will be slowing down quite a bit now. Students are back next week Thursday, I am hoping to finish trios and sextets by then, and then I will choose either something to peck at slowly, or maybe help someone else out with something. (Steltz)

We're way ahead of schedule, in no small part down to your own efforts, so thanks once again for everything you've been able to do so far. I hope to be back tagging again systematically once I've finished making changes to the categories, which were needed afer the unexpected appearance of the new arrangement tagging system :-) — P.davydov 14:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the arrangement tagging system is a bit excessive—the categories box for Beethoven's Symphony No.9 took up 6 lines... (^–^) ClassicalComposers 02:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, I think that the arrangement categories should remain separate from the work categories. "For piano 4 hands (arr)" is enough for an orchestral work; "scores with piano 4 hands" just... doesn't seem right. ClassicalComposers 02:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I do understand your reservations. The original intention was that the descriptions would only apply to a work page as a whole, and arrangements for different instruments wouldn't be considered in the short term. But the sudden arrival of autotags for arrangements forced a change of emphasis, meaning that we now have to consider all the scores (including arrangements) on the page, as well as the instrumentation of the original work (whose score might not even yet be included).

In order for arrangements to be searchable they have to be integrated with the original works to some degree; otherwise whenever someone wanted to find works scored for "piano 4 hands" they'd have to carry out a second completely separate search on "piano 4 hands (arr)", or on "Works for 4 players" as well as "Arrangements for 4 players", etc. So the compromise is that the instrumentation of all arrangements on a work page is distinguished by the suffix "(arr)" in the category name.

Technically it's not possible to stop "piano 4 hands (arr)" from including the higher categories "Keyboard" and "For 2 players" - unless we ran a parallel system with separate categories for "Keyboard (arr)" and "For 2 players (arr)", which would involve a lot of duplication, and would become very confusing for anyone using the category walker to search on instrumentation or numbers of players. While this may produce a lot of categories at the bottom of a page, all in all that's less important than allowing people to search effectively through all the scores (originals as well as arrangements) via the category walker, which Feldmahler has said will be the key new feature of IMSLP. Feldmahler has set a target of 50% of works tagged before the walker can go 'live', which at the current rate of progress will be just weeks away... — P.davydov 10:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

quartets for 2 oboes, English Horn and Basson

All but the quartet of per Brant listed in the above category are not quartets for 2 oboes, English horn, bassoon, but quartets for Oboe, English Horn, Bass Oboe and Basson. A new category for them should be introduced (I proposed "double reed quartet"), or a more general category (4 double reed instruments) should be used.Notenschreiber 08:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Just to reassure you that the category names aren't intended to show detailed instrumentations, and are just a general guide to the forces involved, which is why oboe and bass oboe have been grouped together as "2 oboes". Anyone finding your arrangements this way will then be able to see the precise instrumentation from your descriptions. The new method of searching will be the "Category Walker", which will not be officially launched for a few weeks yet, and until then some categories may stil be subject to change (which is why they may still be shown as red links instead of blue) — P.davydov 10:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

To group together oboe and bass oboe makes no sense. A bass oboe is rather an English Horn instead of an Oboe. It looks like
an English but it is bigger and it sounds like an English Horn but it is deeper.Notenschreiber 13:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

In that case would "For oboe, 2 English horns and bassoon" be an improvement? — P.davydov 13:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I try to understand the philosophy of your argumention. Why not simply "For oboe, English horn, Bass oboe and bassoon" ? Do you want to avoid rare instruments? Why? In the next step the user will notice, that a bass oboe (or Heckelphon) is needed to play the
music without changes in notation or even changes in details of the arrangement.Notenschreiber 21:05, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Yes, we are trying to avoid putting rare instruments in the names of categories. So far the bass oboe has only appeared in your arrangements, but maybe you know of other examples? — P.davydov 21:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The bass oboe appears at IMSLP for example as an orchestra part of Holst´s planets. Another example is the dance rhapsody of
fredric delius.Notenschreiber 22:33, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I've passed your comments on for discussion by the tagging project team, and I'll let you know the consensus, probably in a few days (as one of our instrument experts is currently away) — P.davydov

A few things

First off, I want to say that CategoryWalker saved my presentation yesterday from being a total disaster. The first half of the presentation was like watching a trainwreck in slow motion. What I think happened was that, while technically I was supposed to talk about "the future of digital libraries," people who attended the event (mostly librarians) wanted to hear me talk about IMSLP. So I ended up having to skim huge portions of the presentation I had originally prepared, and in the process boring lots of people. Lesson: do audience research before starting a presentation.

But anyway. After a while I thought it might be better to demonstrate the CategoryWalker, and it took off like a bird. Everyone was very interested in the possibilities that CW has to offer, and want to see it up as soon as possible. So I think perhaps we can make preparations for CW going live earlier than what I said earlier (50%). Perhaps a few links here and there would be OK. Ultimately I think we should have an "entry" page which lists all the good entry points (composer entry points should be on the composer pages however).

But there is also another reason I'm telling you this. There was one composer there who asked if it could find all compositions in E-flat for solo piano. That got me thinking. Technically speaking, everything on the work pages (especially the ones in the work info section) is fair game for the tagging system. For example, I can create work key tags with only a few minutes of coding (it would work like the arrangement tags).

So I wanted you to perhaps keep an eye on what sort of information on work pages would benefit from inclusion in the tagging system. I'm not extremely excited about key tagging because I don't think many people care about searching pieces based on keys (I think the composer was just trying to make a random example). Having unnecessary categories slows down the CW system, so I would like to avoid that. However, if there are any information that is useful in tags, by all means tell me.

Several other unrelated things: I've fixed a few minor issues with CW and a few other things, but one change you might be interested in is that tags now allow any character (including single quotes). But there is a twist to this: what the system does is allow any character in the tags as specified on the work pages, but convert all forbidden characters into spaces when resolving the tag. For example, "|Tag=oboe d'amore" would be interpreted as "oboe d amore". --Feldmahler 14:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, it's great that people were so enthusiastic to hear about IMSLP! The CW is a radically different approach to most online catalogues, and your audience's excitement is a testament to the fact that we're exploring new territory. We could, if you want, try a soft launch for the category walker, so that we can iron out any problems before rolling out the whole thing? I think good way to do this would be to activate the featured instruments categories, which would each include their own links to the walker (in a similar way to our test Sonatas category). This should be very easy to do, now that the list of featured instruments is more or less final.

Good idea. Go ahead and try it. The CW system should be fit for mass consumption at this point in time. Tell me if you experience load/slowness issues.

I'd certainly agree that we should keep an open mind as to what other information might be used for searching. A major obstacle to this is that the "General information" sections of the work pages are extremely sparse, with maybe no more than 15% of works having this information fully (and accurately) completed. Maybe putting the general information section at the top of work pages instead of the bottom would focus minds on all the blank spaces :-)

Well, another (perhaps simpler) way of dealing with this is to throw the thing into the CW along with an "untagged" category (specific to that particular piece of information of course), so people would easily find the untagged pages. If they think that particular piece of information is important enough, I'd think they would be interested in filling it in.

Obviously it may not be as useful from the start due to the sparsity of information, but that would be improved as people notice this problem. And so I think it may be important to identify the information that would be useful in the CW system, without considering whether there is enough information at the moment.

What I'd like to know for implementing any additional categories in the CW is two things: (1) what the category/information is (of course) and (2) what are the common ways that people fill this information, so that I can make tags out of it. No hurry; in fact, focus on the retagging first. However, it may be something to keep in mind, since you will be surveying all the pages anyway.

No doubt all these things will be addressed at some point. The category walker will help people navigate to the dustier corners of IMSLP, and maybe prompt them to do some spring cleaning while they're there. In the meantime we'll carry on tagging! — P.davydov 15:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Having found vocal works in the piano section, and concertos under "symphonic dance pieces" (!), I'd hestitate to give an assurance that the above have been completed :-) That might follow, but as you'll have gathered from exchanges with Feldmahler, the idea is to launch the category walker "quietly" to test the load on the server. Indeed I've had some trouble accessing the site this morning, which may or may not be due to the operation of the category walker. We'll have to see...

BTW, thank you for the organology, which gives a pretty definitive answer :-) — P.davydov 09:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Mephisto Waltz

In the article "2 Episoden aus Lenau's Faust, S.110 (Liszt, Franz)" you wrote that the orchestral version of the Mephisto Waltz is based on the piano version (in the comments). My only source on this (Larry Sitzky's book on Busoni, which may not be completely reliable) says this about the Busoni transcription of S.110/2: "The Mephisto Waltz provides a rare ooportunity to compare the same work transcribed by two undoubted masters of the art." This seems to imply that Liszt also prepared his piano version from the orchestral score (which I admit seems a bit odd). Perhaps you have a better source of information. If so, I'm curious what it is. Thanks! --Robert.Allen 20:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Hello Robert. I'm only going by the latest worklist in Grove, which states "pf version preceded orch version [...] contrary to earlier chronologies". It seems the compilers (Maria Eckhardt, Rena Charnin Mueller) had access to new information that contradicted Sitzky, but they don't specifically state their source(s) — P.davydov 20:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Sitzky's passage was written in 1986. I would suspect that the New Grove has the latest and best information. Thanks for the info. --Robert.Allen 22:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

List of Compositions Featuring the Horn

Hello!

I've been working over the last few days at re-organizing and adding new works to the "List of Compositions Featuring the Horn". I just read about the "IMSLP categorization project". Do you think it's worth pursuing my efforts towards making the "List of Compositions Featuring the Horn" more complete? Or will the "Categorization project" will be gradually replacing the old list? Thanks for letting me know!

(Replied on user's talk page)

Stars

You mentioned a desired system of "medals" on IMSLP. Wikis have something similar called barnstars - see Category:Barnstar Templates - and anyone can award them. Have fun (and stelz already had one ;) ;).
Great job tagging! This project has far exceeded expectations in every way!-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 19:10, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll bear the barnstars in mind :-) You've probably seen this already? It's just phase 1, testing the load on the walker, and the final interface should look a little less basic — P.davydov 19:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I saw...looks great. It also looks as if we need to a) start getting people to do "recent additions" tagging (maybe when we hit about 60% done) and b) start with choral music (especially to placate operalala ;). And check the moderator forum - I'm going to make a post about which you may be interested ;)-- SnaileyTalk to MeEmail me 22:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

March of the Volunteers

Dear P.davydov, I saw your tag on "March of the Volunteers." I must tell you that the tag you added was incorrect; the piece is for a marching band. I didn't want to get myself in trouble, so I merely added the instrumentation and removed the tag. Please tag it again. Do not mistaken this for vandalism; I did what I did so that we would have the correct data on IMSLP. Thanks, ClassicalComposers 20:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Group membership

You could have at least told me. Please change my group membership back. Thanks, ClassicalComposers 21:00, 24 January 2010 (UTC)